3 Ways To Prepare For Back To School Season As An Affiliate Manager

As an affiliate manager, each season presents new opportunities and the end of the summer, also known as “Back to School Season,” is no different. As affiliate managers, one main goal along with driving sales is keeping our affiliates engaged and there’s no better way to do that than to consistently offer relevant content, special offers, sales, or promotions. Today we’re going to cover three ways to prepare for back to school season as an affiliate manager.

Back To School Sale

This one seems obvious given the title of the article; however, it’s so easy to coast through the end of the summer after the 4th of July and then all of a sudden Labor Day hits and you realize that your sales took a hit during the last 7-8 weeks! It’s important to consider structuring a sales event or special promotion during mid-late August to break up that time between July 4th and Labor Day.

Some ideas include a site-wide discount or a specific dollar amount off an order greater than a certain value. You could also offer a “Back To School Commission Bump” where you increase the commission for your affiliates during the two middle weeks in August. An incentive like this would definitely get the attention of your affiliate base during a time where people often take vacations and sales tend to slump a bit.

Back To School Newsletter

Affiliate Managers should always communicate regularly with their affiliate base; however, if you don’t send out many newsletters this is the perfect time of year to send one. Make sure you include some updates on your business and any relevant information that affiliates could use in their promotions. Share info about your back to school sale if you’re having one. This is also a great opportunity to look ahead and highlight some big events that are coming up over the next few months. Even though the new year starts in January, for a lot of people the year feels like it begins when the kids go back to school.

I would use this newsletter as an opportunity to tease all the Q4 specials that might be coming up when Black Friday and the holidays roll around. It’s also a good time to share some new banners or creative that you may have to go along with the season. Even though school is starting, the summer season itself is only half over. Take advantage of that while you can.

Fresh Creative

Lastly, you should have your creative team put together some fresh, new graphics for back to school season. Up until this point, you’ve been riding the Memorial Day and Independence Day wave and it’s likely you haven’t had any new creative that wasn’t holiday themed since the start of spring. Along with some school themed creative, you can also take this chance to have your design team make some purely summer themed creative. Like previously mentioned, technically summer does not end until the end of September so there’s still plenty of time to use these.

Good luck with all your efforts this back to school season and feel free to email us or comment below with any comments or questions. We would love to hear from you!